Crucial CD Collection
THE heavily guitar-based contemporary Tuareg music of the Sahel region of Niger and northern Mali, naturally if sometimes a little hazily identified as desert blues, has gradually been making itself felt on a wider stage over the past few years through groups such as Toumast of Niger and Terakaft, Tamikrest and especially the mighty Tinariwen of Mali.
Much of it is genuinely politically orientated rebel music, in the case of members of Tinariwen and Toumast even made by rebel fighters themselves, born of a revolution that has been waged intermittently for several decades in support of an independent territory, Azawad, which the nomadic Tuaregs might call their own. It was desperately ironic, therefore, that when Azawad was finally proclaimed it was by extremists who established Sharia law and banned the music outright, on pain of death.
Although this has probably been the most newsworthy instance, it’s certainly not the first attempt made to silence the music that the Kel Tamashek, the people who speak the Tamashek language, coming straight to the point, simply call “Guitar”.
It has been banned, at various times, in Niger, Mali and Algeria and, in fact, several former members of Toumast were murdered during the 1990s after the Tuaregs had reached an accord with the Niger government. During that period of unrest, the young Bombino, born Goumar Almoctar, a musical generation younger, lived in exile with his family in Algeria. Returning to Niger, he became a professional musician espousing the political lyrics and mesmeric guitar style of his fellow Tuaregs, and although further unrest a decade or so later would cause him to flee temporarily to Burkina Faso, he came home again in time to name his first solo album, 2011’s Agadez, following an earlier effort under the name of Group Bombino, after the city in northern Niger.
Its successor, Nomad, has recently been released on the estimable Nonesuch label, an almost certain guarantee of quality just outside of the mainstream. It’s produced by the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, whose production last year of Dr John generated one of the year’s best albums and this one is already shaping up as a likely end-of-year list contender too. The first track, Amadinine, provides as explosive an opening salvo as any we’re likely to hear for a while, instantly declaring its position, which is that Nomad is a full-tilt North African rock record where, much as its Delta-via-Chicago cousin was to rock ’n’ roll, the desert blues is only one of the elements, albeit the dominant one. The song is a Bombino original and not the similarly named one by Tinariwen, and the same applies to others with familiar titles. The themes of desert, water, friendship and freedom are pervasive in this music.
The relentless, hypnotic drone, more Mississippi Hill Country than Delta if we are making blues comparisons, that characterises the electric music of the Tuaregs, still dominates, but the guitars, turning from sinuous to sinewy and back again in a flash, are doubled and redoubled, fattening the sound to a point where the music becomes genuinely psychedelic. The loping camel-stride rhythms are emphasised by the augmentation, rather than the replacement, of the trademark handclaps with drums, and production touches include the occasional subtle keyboard overlay and the unexpected but highly successful employment on a couple of tracks of Nashville pedal steel guitarist Russ Pahl.
Nomad may not be quite the Stones turning Howlin’ Wolf into rock, though the analogy is not entirely out of place, and it’s probably too much to suggest that it will finally kick-start a Tuareg musical revolution, but the huge sonic strides since Agadez, while leaving the core evocative attraction of this deeply mysterious music largely intact, make Bombino an artist to be closely watched.